Re: Loadable drivers [was SMP/cc Cluster description ]

Kai Henningsen
2001-12-06T20:48:40Z

skraw@ithnet.com (Stephan von Krawczynski) wrote on 06.12.01 in <20011206173455.104b6a02.skraw@ithnet.com>:

> I have learned something over the recent years: I guess RMS pointed in the
> right direction. I _don't_ think binary drivers are ok. I want to control my
> environment, and don't let _anybody_ control it _for_ me. And if something
> goes wrong, I have a look. And if I am too dumb, I can ask somebody who
> isn't. And there may be a lot of those.

And it is absolutely amazing what you *can* do, if you have the soure,
what you never expected to be able to do, but because you *do* have the
source, you just *have* to look at the problem area ... and poof! there's
something that certainly doesn't look right, maybe if you just try to
change this little bit ...

And thus you learn something new which you wouldn't even have tried with
closed source.

It's not only this. I remember when I first tried to get PPP to work - no,
wait, back then it was SLIP. (Slightly before Linux 1.0, I think.) It just
wouldn't work, and I had no idea why. Obviously I was doing something
wrong, but what?

So I looked at the relevant kernel part. Still rather unclear, but the
data has to go through *here* ... now suppose I insert a printk there, and
one there, and then reboot and retry and watch syslog ... aha! (Well,
actually, it took me several passes, and I don't remember what the problem
turned out to be except it wasn't a kernel bug.)

MfG Kai